Welfare Leads to Slavery

How to obtain peace and prosperity for all is the defining issue of our day.

Erik Johnson, the black mayor of Dallas, Texas, wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal this week called America’s Cities Need Republicans: And I’m Becoming One.

Mr. Johnson writes (emphasis mine):

Many of our cities are in disarray. Mayors and local elected officials have failed to prioritize public safety or exercise fiscal restraint. Most of these local leaders are proud Democrats who view cities as laboratories for liberalism rather than havens for opportunity and free enterprise.

“How,” one might ask, “are American cities becoming laboratories for liberalism?”

Government handouts in Baltimore, New York, San Franciso, Washington D.C., and other large American cities to “those in need” have led to the gradual downfall of those cities.

In other words, welfare is destroying the United States.

Thomas Sowell, America’s leading black philosopher and intellectual, published an article the same day Erik Johnson’s editorial appeared in the WSJ.

Entitled Social Justice Is Neither Social nor Just, Mr. Sowell shows in his brilliant article how the meaning of the words “freedom” and “democracy” have changed in the liberal mindset.

“Many intellectual elites seem to regard themselves as promoting a more democratic society when they preempt other people’s decisions. Their conception of democracy seems to be the equalization of outcomes.

Democrat President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) favored government by surrogate decision-makers, armed with superior knowledge and understanding—“executive expertness”—and unhindered by the voting public.

These surrogates would confer benefits on the less fortunate, at the expense of those whom these surrogates consider less deserving.

President Wilson, in response to objections that dispensing benefits would deprive the people at large of the freedom to live their own lives as they saw fit, simply redefined the word “freedom.”

By depicting government-provided benefits—dispensed by surrogate decision-makers—as an additional freedom for the recipients, President Wilson made the issue of people’s loss of freedom disappear, as if by verbal sleight of hand.

Freedom to liberals now means equal outcomes for all.

In other words, a democracy is “free” when everyone has the same amount of prosperity and peace of mind.

Liberal elites in government civil positions of authority feel they have the expertise to determine how to obtain equal outcomes.

They do not hesitate to use the government treasury - including massive debt if needed - to dispense government benefits required for ALL peoples - even illegal immigrants - to possess the equal portions of prosperity and peace of other Americans.

The Slavery of Benefits

Richard Maybury reminds us that the Founding Fathers’ definition of freedom (Natural Law) differs from the modern liberal definition.

The Founders’ views can be summarized in seventeen words:

“Do all you have agreed to do, and do not encroach on other persons or their property.”

The Founding Fathers believed you are only truly free if others do not move against your person or property or violate their promise to you.

If others, even government elites, move against you and your property or break their word to you - but give you benefits as a reward - you still are not free.

Liberals have the terrible habit of exalting the desirability of peace and prosperity and excluding the feasibility of their principles.

Giving government benefits leads to tyranny, not freedom.

Liberal elites tell you what’s best for you, demand obeisance to their decrees, and then promise rewards if you obey the government and punishment if you don’t.

That’s not freedom. It’s tyranny.

Conservatives desire peace and prosperity for all as well. We disagree on how we get there.

A couple of biblical principles have stood the test of time for thousands of years.

“If a man does not work, he should not eat,” said Paul in II Thessalonians 3:10.

“You will always have the poor among you,” said Jesus in John 12:8.

Individual responsibility, equal opportunity, and the risk of poverty are the only ways true freedom exists.

Yes, some can’t work (the disabled, the elderly, the sick). In those situations, charitable organizations are responsible for giving charity to those in need.

Giving increased government funding to unwed mothers in urban centers for having many children with multiple fathers is a sure road to slavery, not prosperity.

Elites who think equal outcomes, not equal opportunity, are the path to peace and prosperity are giving birth to tyranny.

The true threat to democracy and freedom is those who have changed the meaning of democracy and freedom, attaching their meaning to government welfare.